Is­raeli strikes pound­ed Gaza overnight and in­to Tues­day, hit­ting a fam­i­ly home and a school-turned-shel­ter, and killing at least 60 peo­ple, Pales­tin­ian health of­fi­cials said, as Is­rael pressed its war against Hamas de­spite mount­ing in­ter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion.

Is­rael launched an­oth­er ma­jor of­fen­sive in the ter­ri­to­ry in re­cent days, say­ing it aims to re­turn dozens of hostages held by Hamas and de­stroy the mil­i­tant group. More than 300 peo­ple have been killed in Gaza since the start of the lat­est on­slaught, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal health of­fi­cials.

Is­rael says it seeks to seize Gaza and hold on to ter­ri­to­ry there, dis­place hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple and se­cure aid dis­tri­b­u­tion.

As the new of­fen­sive ramps up, Is­rael agreed to al­low a lim­it­ed amount of aid in­to the war-rav­aged ter­ri­to­ry of rough­ly 2 mil­lion peo­ple af­ter a 2 1/2 month block­ade that pre­vent­ed the en­try of food, med­i­cine and fu­el, among oth­er goods. The block­ade prompt­ed warn­ings from food ex­perts of a risk of famine.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said he made the de­ci­sion to let in min­i­mal aid af­ter pres­sure from al­lies, who he said couldn’t sup­port Is­rael so long as “im­ages of hunger” were com­ing out of Gaza.

Crit­i­cism of Is­rael’s con­duct in­ten­si­fied Mon­day when al­lies Cana­da, France and the Unit­ed King­dom threat­ened “con­crete ac­tions” against the coun­try, in­clud­ing sanc­tions, and called on Is­rael to stop its “egre­gious” new mil­i­tary ac­tions in Gaza. Ne­tanyahu re­ject­ed the crit­i­cism, say­ing it was “a huge prize” for Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, at­tack that would in­vite more such vi­o­lence.

French For­eign Min­is­ter Jean-Noël Bar­rot de­nounced the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment’s “blind vi­o­lence” in Gaza that he said has turned the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry in­to a “place of death.”

“This must stop,” Bar­rot told French ra­dio France In­ter on Tues­day.

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. hu­man­i­tar­i­an agency OCHA, said the world body had re­ceived ap­provals for about 100 trucks to en­ter Gaza.

But he said on­ly five trucks have crossed in­to Gaza since Mon­day and those do not ap­pear to have been tak­en yet by aid groups for dis­tri­b­u­tion. It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear what was caus­ing the holdup.

The U.N. says that amount of trucks is just “drop in the ocean” of what is need­ed. Some 600 trucks a day had en­tered dur­ing a cease­fire ear­li­er this year.

Is­raeli politi­cian crit­i­cizes killing ‘ba­bies as a hob­by’

Crit­i­cism against Is­rael’s con­duct in Gaza came al­so from in­side the coun­try, with a leader of Is­rael’s cen­ter-left pol­i­tics say­ing on Tues­day that Is­rael was be­com­ing an “out­cast among na­tions” be­cause of the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the war.

“A sane coun­try doesn’t en­gage in fight­ing against civil­ians, doesn’t kill ba­bies as a hob­by and doesn’t set for it­self the goals of ex­pelling a pop­u­la­tion,” Yair Golan, a re­tired gen­er­al and leader of the op­po­si­tion De­moc­rats par­ty, told Reshet Bet ra­dio.

His com­ments were rare crit­i­cism from with­in Is­rael of its wartime con­duct in Gaza. Many Is­raelis have crit­i­cized Ne­tanyahu through­out the war, but that has been most­ly lim­it­ed to what op­po­nents ar­gue are his po­lit­i­cal mo­tives to con­tin­ue the war. Crit­i­cism like Golan’s, over the war’s toll on Pales­tin­ian civil­ians, has been al­most un­heard.

Ne­tanyahu swift­ly slammed Golan’s re­marks, call­ing them “wild in­cite­ment” against Is­raeli sol­diers and ac­cus­ing Golan of echo­ing “dis­grace­ful an­ti­se­mit­ic blood li­bels” against the coun­try.

Golan, who donned his uni­form dur­ing Hamas’ 2023 at­tack to join the fight against the raid­ing mil­i­tants, pre­vi­ous­ly sparked an up­roar when as deputy mil­i­tary chief of staff in 2016, he likened the at­mos­phere in Is­rael to that of Nazi-era Ger­many.

Strikes pound Gaza

Over re­cent days, strikes have pound­ed ar­eas across Gaza and Is­rael has is­sued evac­u­a­tion or­ders for Gaza’s sec­ond-largest city, Khan You­nis, which en­dured a pre­vi­ous of­fen­sive that left vast de­struc­tion.

In the lat­est strikes, two in north­ern Gaza hit a fam­i­ly home and a school-turned-shel­ter, killing at least 22 peo­ple, more than half of them women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to the Gaza Health Min­istry.

A strike in the cen­tral city of Deir al-Bal­ah killed 13 peo­ple, and an­oth­er in the near­by built-up Nu­seirat refugee camp killed 15, ac­cord­ing to the Al-Aqsa Mar­tyrs Hos­pi­tal.

Two strikes in the south­ern city of Khan You­nis killed 10 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to Nass­er Hos­pi­tal.

There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment from the Is­raeli mil­i­tary, which says it on­ly tar­gets mil­i­tants and blames Hamas for civil­ian deaths be­cause the group op­er­ates in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas.

The war in Gaza be­gan when Hamas-led mil­i­tants at­tacked south­ern Is­rael, killing some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and ab­duct­ing 251 oth­ers. The mil­i­tants are still hold­ing 58 cap­tives, around a third be­lieved to be alive, af­ter most of the rest were re­turned in cease­fire agree­ments or oth­er deals.

Is­rael’s re­tal­ia­to­ry of­fen­sive, which has de­stroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Pales­tini­ans, most­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its count.

Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo and Gold­en­berg from Tel Aviv, Is­rael. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Sylvie Cor­bet in Paris and Jamey Keat­en in Gene­va con­tributed to this re­port.

By WAFAA SHU­RAFA, SAMY MAGDY and TIA GOLD­EN­BERG

DEIR AL-BAL­AH, Gaza Strip (AP)